Power & Conflict (AQA GCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

She uses paper to symbolise skin, showing that human power, like the body, is temporary and marked by time.

She presents paper as representing strength, which is done to suggest that human structures can resist decay.

She implies that paper mirrors permanence, which reveals civilisation’s capacity to endure.

She suggests paper embodies resilience, reflecting how written memory can outlast life.

It symbolises enlightenment that transcends human attempts to impose order.

 It represents darkness overwhelming wisdom, showing that control is pointless.

It implies religious imagery distorting moral insight.

It reflects sunlight as a metaphor for human arrogance.

that political boundaries symbolise the unity of nations through shared control

that mapping reflects discovery and celebrates human exploration

that human divisions are fragile constructs that nature can transcend

that maps represent the permanence of civilisation’s achievements

It presents the architect as envisioning design as a living process, shaped by transparency and transformation.

It symbolises the way that artistic permanence is achieved through structured order and divine geometry.

It portrays the architect as prideful, obsessed with mastery and resistant to change.

It suggests the architect replaces imagination with obedience to tradition and power.

The loose quatrains and enjambment mirror the flowing nature of life and resistance to control, reflecting how art and existence refuse containment.

The ten balanced stanzas symbolise measured progress, suggesting that moral structure and human order can coexist with creative limitation.

The absence of rhyme represents creative rebellion, yet its balanced stanza pattern implies humanity’s need for discipline and restraint.

The single-line ending isolates meaning, emphasising how individual identity can be confined by the very structures it seeks to transcend.

It reveals humanity’s ability to rewrite itself through creative renewal and collective memory, blending art and life in a continuous cycle of expression.

It symbolises divine transformation, suggesting that fragility itself becomes the medium through which sacred endurance is achieved.

It fuses the material and the spiritual, asserting that mortality, identity, and faith are interwoven in one living design that outlasts monuments or wealth.

It represents decay and isolation, portraying life as a process of physical disintegration and spiritual detachment from the natural world.

Both poems suggest human authority collapses before greater forces, as Dharker’s light exposes fragility and Shelley’s time erases pride.

Both portray mankind’s creations as lasting monuments to progress, suggesting that design and empire preserve meaning beyond their makers.

Dharker condemns human pride as destructive, while Shelley presents ambition as a flawed but necessary legacy that defines civilisation.

Dharker and Shelley idealise rulers who pursue immortality through physical creation, celebrating artistic grandeur over humility and decay.

Both Dharker and Blake expose systems of power as restrictive, but offer faith or imagination as ways to transcend them.

Dharker and Blake depict control as necessary order that prevents chaos and protects human dignity.

Dharker sees control as fragile and self-imposed, while Blake condemns it as permanent and external oppression.

Both poets present control as inevitable, showing humanity’s need to accept its limits rather than resist them.

Both poets express despair at human weakness, presenting suffering as a constant that no change can erase.

Dharker and Blake each condemn social power yet find beauty in the endurance of the human spirit.

Dharker uses the poem to show empathy for moral decay, while Blake celebrates defiance against it as a path to freedom.

Blake presents pain as endless and corrupting; Dharker shows fragility as a source of strength and hope.